Friends – As many of you know, I spend most of my days serving the fine people of theThe Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis as a staff pastor. As an extension of that work, I regularly get opportunities to enter into other spaces for the purpose of teaching, training, and the like. This year, I’m hoping to do a better job of publicizing these in the hopes that you all, new and old friends, might be able to check out a few. I’ll update and re-share this post as dates are added (or dropped), and I’ll post another list for Q2.

An observation as one who spends his days making disciples…One challenge in discipleship is that most adults have never been taught to pay attention to their inner life.

Whenever I am troubled in any way, the rush is to find external explanations for what I am experiencing. In that sense, the cause of my discomfort is always outside of me – someone or something else has caused it. In my mind, I tell myself that if I could just change that circumstance, go to a different place, surround myself with different people, all would be great. That’s what I tell myself, but I know all along that it’s not actually true. The truth is actually much closer to me than I’d like to admit.

There’s an old adage which says, “wherever you go, you are there.” Do you remember that one? Sobering words, right?

In the rush to find an external cause for our every discomfort or misadventure, we forfeit the golden opportunity to look inward. Though often avoided, looking inward is an incredibly powerful practice that we must discover or rediscover if we are ever to mature spiritually and emotionally. Learning to look inward and inward first, is an essential part of living a “whole and holy” life.

As a pastor and leader, this is especially true for me. Tending to my inner life is a 24/7 gig and it’s not easy at all. Yet, I lean into this practice because of the reality that who we are internally will eventually show up externally. Rather than being paralyzed by the fear of how your inner brokenness might eventually show up and wreak havoc on your life and the life of those around you, why not get started on the work of becoming aware of your inner life and working to transform it? As you getting started in this work, may I suggest a resource?

The single best modern resource that I’ve come across for practice of inner transformation is a book called The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Pete Scazzero. Helping leaders to see a connection between their emotional health and spiritual health is a part of Pete’s life work, which that you can learn more about at EmotionallyHealthy.Org. The Emotionally Healthy Leader is an incredible resource that helps the reader pay attention to their heart, their past, their motivations, and many other elements of the inner life. You’ll explore topics like sabbath, leadership shadows, marriage and singleness, boundaries, and more. I highly recommend this book and the workbook that goes with it!

Regardless of your career or stage of life, your inner life matters. You’re never too late or too early to begin this work. Today is a good day to get started!

Questions:

What do you think keeps most adults from doing that needed inner work?

Over the years, have you learned any helpful strategies for looking inward?

Many people will extol the beauty of one and denigrate the other. Other people will see that they’re both beautiful in their own way. They’re just in very different stages of growth.

I look at the one on the left and imagine that, at some point, it looked like the one on the right. I look at the one on the right and smile because with patience and care, it can one day bloom as fully as the one on the left.

Think about your life. Think about the lives of those around you. Think about the institutions and organizations that you belong to. Are they the plant on the left or the one on the right? Or both?

What’s true about these two plants is true of much of life. At our best, we see that. We get that…and we experience the richness of life because of it!

A few years ago, I recall counseling a young couple through a very difficult situation that left one of them deeply heartbroken and the other, in many ways, crippled by their own actions. Journeying with them caused me think differently about the effects of sin. In churches, especially American evangelical churches, our general understanding of sin is individual and personal – one person’s actions that impact their relationship with God. More and more, I’m realizing that sin is also a communal thing. When one sins, it affects everyone in significant ways. Although significant, the effects are not always immediately visible. Because of that, we maintain that sin is between God and the individual. That is an insufficient understanding of sin. Sin kills. Sin destroys community and relationship. Sin leaves behind a trail of broken hearts. Sin gets in the way of God’s will being lived out in us and through us.

God. others. self. community. Can you see how many are affected by the sins of even one?

There is good news, though.Just as so many and so much can be affected by the sins of just one, there is redemption available to many that is attributable to one. It was the Apostle Paul who wrote that God’s grace and the gift came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, and overflows to many. (Romans 5:15)

So what am I saying? I’m suggesting, at once, at least two things:

Sin is debilitating and needs to be taken much more seriously because of the havoc that it wreaks. Minimizing it is like playing with fire.

We need not feel hopeless about sin, because redemption is available in Jesus Christ.

May God bring both of these truths to our remembrance daily and use them to shape us into his likeness!

(Photo Credit: “Babies of the Revolution” by Patience Zalanga. Accessed by Facebook on Nov. 17, 2015.)

This week in Minneapolis has been a very difficult one. As a metro area, we have all experienced a trauma. I say all emphatically because we often lose sight of the connectedness of our lives. It isn’t always obvious, but when there is violence or hurt in the inner city, it impacts those who call the suburbs or rural areas home. When violence hits those other areas, it impacts lives in the inner city. This is true because we are not as divided as it can seem. Despite our best intentions to separate ourselves – by location, culture, or preference – our lives are, ultimately, deeply interrelated. Despite what America’s racist history or our current turmoil might suggest, we must remember that we are, ultimately, “tied together in a single garment of destiny.”

Those last few words are not my own. They belong to someone who lived and served faithfully at a time when nearly every indicator suggested that hate, not love, was the name of the game. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived and served at a time when both de jure and de facto law served to keep Black and poor people oppressed and separated from the rest of society. It would have been easy to fall into hopelessness, despair, or lawlessness, yet, Dr. King and others chose a different path and changed the course of world history.

In light of recent events in America and as we search for meaningful ways to affect change in my own city, I think we would be wise to look back to the philosophies and actions of the movement that Dr. King led. These campaigns impacted nearly every facet of American society and that effect reverberated around the globe. What they did matters. How and why they did it mattered just as much. Below are some of the core philosophies of Dr. King’s nonviolent movement that we should not ignore in contemporary social movements:

SIX STEPS OF NONVIOLENT SOCIAL CHANGE

The Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change are based on Dr. King’s nonviolent campaigns and teachings that emphasize love in action. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence, as reviewed in the Six Principles of Nonviolence, guide these steps for social and interpersonal change.

INFORMATION GATHERING: To understand and articulate an issue, problem or injustice facing a person, community, or institution you must do research. You must investigate and gather all vital information from all sides of the argument or issue so as to increase your understanding of the problem. You must become an expert on your opponent’s position.

EDUCATION: It is essential to inform others, including your opposition, about your issue. This minimizes misunderstandings and gains you support and sympathy.

PERSONAL COMMITMENT: Daily check and affirm your faith in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence. Eliminate hidden motives and prepare yourself to accept suffering, if necessary, in your work for justice.

DISCUSSION/NEGOTIATION: Using grace, humor and intelligence, confront the other party with a list of injustices and a plan for addressing and resolving these injustices. Look for what is positive in every action and statement the opposition makes. Do not seek to humiliate the opponent but to call forth the good in the opponent.

DIRECT ACTION: These are actions taken when the opponent is unwilling to enter into, or remain in, discussion/negotiation. These actions impose a “creative tension” into the conflict, supplying moral pressure on your opponent to work with you in resolving the injustice.

RECONCILIATION: Nonviolence seeks friendship and understanding with the opponent. Nonviolence does not seek to defeat the opponent. Nonviolence is directed against evil systems, forces, oppressive policies, unjust acts, but not against persons. Through reasoned compromise, both sides resolve the injustice with a plan of action. Each act of reconciliation is one step closer to the ‘Beloved Community.’